“Now, cool down, little woman,” MacNutt was saying to her in his placid guttural. “We’ve been through enough scrapes together to know each other, so there’s no use you gettin’ high-strung and nervous. And I guess you know I’m no piker, when it comes to anybody I care about. I never went back on you, Frank, even though you _did_ treat me like a dog and swing in with that damned welcher Durkin, and try to bleed me for my last five hundred. I tell you, Frank, I can’t get used to the thought of not havin’ you ’round!” She gave forth a little inarticulate cry of hate and abhorrence for him. She could see that he had been drinking, and that he was shattered, both in body and nerve. “Oh, you’ll get over that! I’ve knocked around with women—I’ve been makin’ and spendin’ money fast enough for anybody this season; but no one’s just the same as you! You thought I was good enough to work with once, and I guess I ought to be good enough to travel with now!” “That’s enough!” she broke in, wrathfully. She had grown calmer by this time, and her thoughts were returning to her mind now, buzzing and rapid, like bees in a fallen hive. “No, it’s not,” he retorted, with an ominous shake of the square jaw and beefy neck. “And you just wait until I finish. You’ve been playin’ pretty fast and loose with me, Frank Candler, and I’ve been takin’ it meek and quiet, for I knew you’d soon get tired of this two-cent piker you’ve been workin’ the wires with!” She opened her lips to speak, but no sound came from them. “I tell you, Frank, you’re not the sort of woman that can go half fed and half dressed, driftin’ ’round dowdy and hungry and homeless, most of the time! You’re too fine for all that kind o’ thing. A woman like you has got to have money, and be looked after, and showed around, and let take things easy—or what’s the use o’ bein’ a beauty, anyway! You know all that, ’s well as I do!” “Yes, I know all that!” she said vacantly, wearily, for her racing thoughts were far away. She was inwardly confessing to herself that they who live by the sword must die by the sword. “Then what’s the use o’ crucifyin’ yourself?” cried MacNutt, seeming to catch hope from her change of tone. “You know as well as I do that I can hound this Durkin off the face o’ the globe. I can make it so hot for him here in New York that he daren’t stick his nose within a foot o’ the Hudson. And I’m goin’ to do it, too! I’m goin’ to do it, unless you want to come and stop me from doin’ it!” “Why?” she asked emptily. “Didn’t you save my life once, Frank, right in this room? Damn it all, you must have thought a little about me, to do a thing like that!” “And what did you do for it?” she demanded, with a sudden change of front. Once again she was all animal, artful and cunning and crafty. “You played the sneak-thief. You slunk back here and stole his money. No, no; there’s no good your denying it—you came and stole his honestly earned money!” “Honestly earned?” he scoffed.